


Some Other Man's Beliefs

by thattrainssailed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Belief, Character Study, M/M, Magnus Bane's past, Magnus' mother - Freeform, Religion, mild dunking on protestantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 19:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19235560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thattrainssailed/pseuds/thattrainssailed
Summary: Religion has never quite fit into Magnus’ worldview.He knows there is something other than the physical plane, of course. As a warlock he has a direct wire to it, some part of him that coils beneath his skin and from his buzzing fingertips, linking him to something he cannot know but can sense. Some part of him exists only in metaphysics. The world is bigger than mundanes may think, bigger than even those in the shadow world can perceive. There are things that cannot be explained by even the eldest of their people, facets relegated to the myths told by living legends. Something beyond even them, the embodied supernatural.Magnus has always found it difficult to believe anything too deeply.





	Some Other Man's Beliefs

Religion has never quite fit into Magnus’ worldview.

He knows there is something other than the physical plane, of course. As a warlock he has a direct wire to it, some part of him that coils beneath his skin and from his buzzing fingertips, linking him to something he cannot know but can  _ sense _ . Some part of him exists only in metaphysics. The world is bigger than mundanes may think, bigger than even those in the shadow world can perceive. There are things that cannot be explained by even the eldest of their people, facets relegated to the myths told by living legends. Something  _ beyond _ even them, the embodied supernatural.

Magnus has always found it difficult to believe anything too deeply.

He is no stranger to the idea of faith. From his earliest memories, before his heritage was realised, he had been forced into uncomfortable clothes and marched to a makeshift church every Sunday, forced to stand for hours as some pale-skinned man pulled them through the liturgy. The wine stung his throat and the bread drew his mouth into dryness, and as he coughed the service continued around him, telling him to find gratitude in his suffering, to take hold of the grace, because only then will his soul be saved. Magnus bowed his head and moved his lips to the prayer mumbled within the tiny room. He wondered why God needed worship before He would save anyone. He wondered if the thought would send him to hell.

He remembers asking his mother, crawling into her bed late one night and whispering the question to her in their own tongue as thought God could not find his sins amongst Old Malay. His mother had cradled him in her lap and whispered back, told him of something altogether different. She told him of Mohammed and his mountain; of Allah and his mercy; of the cycle of life and death and that paradise that could be achieved after so many lifetimes. She read to him from the Qur’an and the Vedas, connecting the two, letting Magnus’ tiny fingers trace the Sanskrit titles. He gazed over the volumes, the different languages, the different tales, and asked his mother how they could meet. At that, she held him close and kissed his hair.

“Everything always does.”

Days later, Magnus had felt the static of magic beneath his skin for the first time. When he opened his eyes, he was met with his mother’s scream.

She was dead within a month.

As Magnus’ step father lunged and grabbed at him, held fast to the twisting and screaming child as they approached the river, Magnus tried to remember the stories, the promises of mercy and deserving and peace.

Before his head was forced beneath the water, he heard the beginning of a prayer in his step-father’s mouth.

“Our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done-”

Magnus thrashed. Panic pulsed. His lungs bled. He reached out, towards some great beyond, some hope he had not yet grasped for, and suddenly there was oxygen again, air and the smell of ozone, and Magnus shook with the relief of it.

His step-father did not reach his Amen.

Magnus had clung to it for a time. He had haunted the streets of Jakarta, slept huddled in alleys, eaten from scraps thrown carelessly to the ground. In his time of greatest need, he had been saved. Perhaps there was something to the mercy whispered by his mother. He hoped. He waited.

By the time the Silent Brothers found him half-burned from banishing his true father, Magnus knew that the power that had saved him was not of some higher being. It was his own. And his own power had no mercy.

Magnus saw his own suffering and decided that if there was anything above them, it was not worthy of worship.

And so he lived. He grew and learned and moved until he stopped growing and yet did not age. He found others like him, with trauma behind their eyes and magic in their fingertips, and together they laughed at the very idea of belief. They sought out the faithful and mocked them, toyed with them. It was not cruelty, but justice. Had they been allowed to strike first, they would have surely tried to kill these children of hell.

For a long time, it was enough. Magnus believed only in himself and those he loved. The world was bigger now, far greater than anything suggested by Protestant invaders or the strange blend of Islam and Hinduism offered by his mother. Magnus knew hell, magic, knew of angels, and yet they were still removed from true belief. These were tangible; they fit into the world. Through all their powers, they did not boast creation. They were no higher than the power that Magnus himself possessed.

And then Magnus met Alexander Lightwood.

It’s ironic, perhaps. The nephilim were always at the forefront of Magnus’ derision: zealots with a superiority complex, bowing to some angel not worthy of worship, least of all from an army. The Lightwoods were among the worst. So dedicated to something so obviously false. And yet when Alexander smiled, stood up slightly straighter when Magnus looked at him, the stirring in Magnus’ chest was not ridicule.

Now, time having passed, Alexander now his husband, Magnus can begin to admit what that feeling has always been.

Because after all of Magnus’ centuries, everything he has seen and done and known and rejected, Alexander is  _ new _ . His love is one Magnus has not known before. Raw and young, endless and steady. They drift together and hold tight, beings uniting. Alexander promises him, and for the first time in his life, Magnus wonders if this is truly something divine.

He finds grace in Alexander’s kisses. Worship in his body. Faith in his vows, transcendence in his devotion, mystery in their perfection for one another. Because surely this could not happen naturally, two so broken men finding one another and fitting so beautifully. Their relationship could have only been written by something higher than themselves.

Alexander loves him, and for the first time, Magnus knows mercy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my latest incoherent yelling about shadowhunters and religion.
> 
> I'm far from an expert on Indonesian religion but I know that the Dutch were Protestant and that prior to their invasion Islam was the biggest religion for the indigenous people with some Hinduism and Buddhism as well. I decided I'd have Magnus' mother grow up with a slight mix of them because lbr there are no real lines between religions and they tend to influence another a lot when they exist in the same place.
> 
> Title comes from Foreigner's God by Hozier.
> 
> For inevitably more garbage on religion/shadowhunters/both, follow on me [tumblr](https://thattrainssailed.tumblr.com/).


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